1. WORLD CUP REVIEW MEETING: RFU BOARD OF DIRECTORS, WEDNESDAY

Who will be present? The 15-strong board of directors, which includes Martyn Thomas, the acting chief executive, Willie Wildash, the union's president, and will be chaired by Paul Murphy. Rob Andrew, England's elite rugby director, will deliver a report but will leave when the board discusses the recommendations.

What is on the agenda? They will receive a report from the Professional Game Board into England's World Cup campaign, one based largely on the three reviews leaked to a newspaper. The PGB, which was set up three years ago as part of the agreement over the management of elite players between the RFU and Premiership Rugby, will make recommendations about the position vacated this month by Martin Johnson and the make-up of the England coaching team.

The PGB is made up of representatives from the RFU – their chairman, Ian Metcalfe, is a member of the board of directors, Premiership Rugby and the Rugby Players' Association, the groups that separately carried out the three leaked reviews. It was the PGB that effectively torpedoed the review into the World Cup Thomas had asked Fran Cotton to chair because it was a decision that had been made unilaterally, out of kilter with the agreement.

The board will hear recommendations on procedural issues, such as protocol and staffing levels on tours, but the main one will be who succeeds Johnson.

What is likely to happen? It is probable that an interim coaching team for the Six Nations is suggested, leaving the board to create the machinery to make a full-time appointment to be made in the new year, a decision that would be taken in conjunction with the review of the rugby department at Twickenham. The timing may depend on when the new chief executive is able to start work.

England's Six Nations campaign begins in Scotland on 4 February, and an elite training squad must be named by mid-January

2. REFORM OF THE RFU MEETING: RFU COUNCIL, FRIDAY

Who will be present? The 60-strong council is made up of representatives from the RFU's constituent bodies: counties, the armed services, the Oxbridge universities, and the schools, students and women's unions. Clubs in the top divisions, the referees' union and the Rugby Players' Association have representatives on it and there are two national representatives. All serve on a voluntary basis.

What is on the agenda? It is a scheduled quarterly meeting of the council: the last one was held before the start of the World Cup and the board of directors will come under fire because of what has happened in the past three months. Top of the agenda will be the report on the governance of the RFU by the legal firm Slaughter and May, which recommends root and branch reform, slashing the number on the council to 25, scrapping the constituent bodies and replacing them with five regions, each having roughly the same number of clubs, and reducing the size of the board of directors from 15 to 11, investing an in-built majority in three executive directors and three independent nonexecutive directors over five elected, amateur members.

What is likely to happen? The council does not have the power to decide whether all, part or none of the report should be implemented. That is the preserve of the member clubs at July's annual general meeting, when any changes would need a two-thirds majority, but the council will decide which of the recommendations should be put to the AGM.